“Landmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian - a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make a family meal... The landmine is eternally prepared to take victims... It is the perfect soldier, the ‘eternal sentry.’” - Jody Williams

Jody Williams, the 1997 co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, was born in Vermont in 1950. She learned to abhor injustice at an early age from fellow school children, who ruthlessly picked on her brother who was deaf and suffered from schizophrenia. Like many teenagers of her generation, she also developed an aversion to the war being waged in Vietnam.

After attending the University of Vermont in Burlington, Williams returned to Brattleboro, Vermont, where she earned a master's degree in teaching Spanish and English as a Second Language from the school of International Training in 1976. She then taught ESL in Mexico for two years. Teaching in Mexico was Jody’s first exposure to extreme poverty. From Mexico, she moved to Washington, DC. There, she worked two jobs and attended the School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, which led to a master's degree in international relations in 1984.

Concerned by a leaflet she had received on the street one day, Williams attended a meeting to learn more about US involvement in a civil war in El Salvador. Because it seemed to her another misguided US intervention, like in Vietnam, she became immediately and passionately involved in work to stop this intervention. Transforming that passion into a career, she worked for two years leading delegations to Central America as coordinator of the Nicaragua-Honduras Education Project. She also served as the deputy director of organization Medical Aid for El Salvador developing humanitarian relief projects.

With the end of the Cold War, Williams began to consider another advocacy role. In a happy coincidence, Bobby Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, called Williams in late 1991 to see if she was interested in coordinating a new initiative to ban landmines worldwide. After years of building awareness about US policy toward Central America, Williams leapt at the opportunity to mobilize non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world to press their governments in a common and worthwhile cause – the total elimination of antipersonnel landmines.

In October 1992, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) was formally launched by the VVAF, Handicap International, Human Rights Watch, Medico International, Mines Advisory Group, and Physicians for Human Rights. These six groups, which became the original steering committee of the ICBL, issued a "Joint Call to Ban Anti-Personnel Landmines" that included putting an end to their use, production, trade, and stockpiling. They also urged governments to increase their financial resources for humanitarian mine clearance and for victim assistance.

As the campaign's chief strategist, Williams wrote and spoke extensively on the landmine problem and the need for a total ban. Her audiences included the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the Organization of African Unity.

Together with Shawn Roberts, she co-authored "After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines" (VVAF, 1995). Their book detailed the more hidden consequences of landmine use, such as socio-economic effects on people in mine-contaminated countries. Besides the exorbitant medical costs of treating landmine victims, the long-term consequences to a community include reduced employment opportunities and lost access to land for agriculture, grazing, and trading. "People have this idea that land-mined fields are set off with barbed wire like they are in World War II movies, but that is not how it is," Williams once told a reporter. "They put them where people go. They put them next to watering holes, along the banks of the river, in the fields. It is not realistic for people to stay out of those areas."

Working without an office or staff, and relying primarily on fax machines and e-mail to disseminate information, Williams ultimately convinced more than 1,000 NGOs from 60-plus countries to support the campaign. The ICBL gained tremendous visibility when Princess Diana became a vocal landmine critic and visited landmine victims in Angola and Bosnia - two of the most heavily mined countries in the world - in the months before her death.

In October 1996 the Canadian government hosted a meeting of pro-ban governments. The participants had two goals: to formally signal their intention to ban landmines and to develop an "Agenda for Action," a step-by-step strategy to move governments toward a treaty banning antipersonnel landmines. At the conclusion of that meeting, Lloyd Axworthy, the Canadian Foreign Minister, unexpectedly and to their collective diplomatic dismay, openly challenged the participants to do more than just follow the agenda for action to eventually eliminate landmines, but to do it now. To negotiate a treaty and return to Canada in one year to sign an international treaty banning landmines.

They rose to the challenge. In early 1997 Austria drafted a treaty and in September of that year, 89 countries convened in Oslo, Norway, to negotiate the treaty's final language. The Treaty Signing Ceremony was scheduled for December 3 and 4, 1997, at which the treaty would be signed by 122 pro-ban governments in Ottawa, Canada. Less than a week later, Jody and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines were back in Oslo to receive their Nobel Peace Prizes.

In little more than five years, Jody Williams and the ICBL had achieved their goal of raising public awareness about landmines and effecting a landmine ban. In recognition for their efforts, the Norwegian Nobel Committee named Williams and the ICBL as co-recipients of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

In conferring the award to Williams and the ICBL, Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said, "There are those among us who are unswerving in their faith that things can be done to make our world a better, safer, and more humane place and who also, even when the tasks appear overwhelming, have the courage to tackle them... You have helped to rouse public opinion all over the world against the use of an arms technology that strikes quite randomly at the most innocent and most defenseless."

To date, more than 156 countries have signed the landmine ban treaty. For her role in helping make this happen, Williams also received the 1998 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the Fiat Lux Award from Clark University. She has been named a 1997 "Woman of the Year" by Ms., Glamour, and Vanity Fair magazines, and has received honorary doctorate degrees from numerous universities, including Briar Cliff College, Marlboro College, the University of Vermont, and Williams College.

While she no longer serves as the coordinator of the ICBL, Williams serves as its international ambassador. Recently, she has supported the ICBL’s efforts for a new Cluster Munitions Treaty by participating in diplomatic negotiating rounds. The ‘Oslo process’ is on track to produce a signed international treaty banning cluster munitions before the end of 2008. Recently, Williams was the head of the United Nations High-Level Mission of the Human Rights Council to report on the situation of human rights in Darfur.

Currently, Jody Williams is also spearheading the Nobel Women’s Initiative. The Nobel Women's Initiative was established in 2006 by sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. These six women -- representing North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa -- have decided to bring together their extraordinary experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality.

Go back to the 'MEET THE LAUREATES' overview page